By Department of Environment
This year, as with every year in the recent past, Antigua and Barbuda will be joining the global geospatial community to recognise Geographic Information Systems (GIS) Day on the third Wednesday in November.
GIS Day is used by GIS professionals to celebrate the technology of geographic information systems and to educate the public on the benefits of GIS, all while highlighting new developments in the field and showcasing their work.
By overlaying various categories of information linked to the Earth’s surface, GIS can help organisations understand spatial patterns and relationships. This year’s GIS Day will be used to highlight how the Antigua and Barbuda Department of Environment is using earth systems data and spatial relationships to drive climate change adaptation.
Climate change adaptation – the process of adjusting to the expected impacts of climate change in order to minimise harm and take advantage of beneficial opportunities – requires knowledge of future (predicted) climates, magnitudes of impact, and the ability of the human environment to respond.
Each of these pieces of information is “attached” to a location on the Earth’s surface, as is information on population distribution, built assets, and the natural environment. When these data are overlaid with each other, GIS professionals can start to identify patterns, including locations of potential vulnerabilities, impacts, risks, and resilience to future climate change impacts.
This information is now being used to inform adaptation plans for the tourism, wholesale and retail, culture and heritage, infrastructure and housing, and food security sectors, and adaptation plans for the airport and Fitches Creek area, the St John’s City area, and the southwest coast area from Jolly Beach to Johnson’s Point.
Each plan will use GIS to assess future climate impacts in locations housing critical sector resources. These insights can be used by policy experts and physical planners to inform policy and physical adaptations to maximise resilience to climate change across critical sectors and locations in Antigua and Barbuda.
For an interactive look at the distribution and cost of various climate risks across Antigua and Barbuda, visit https://climateriskmap.environment.gov.ag.
For more information on the adaptation planning process and the development of Antigua and Barbuda’s National Adaptation Plan, reach out to the Department of Environment at [email protected].
